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Jon WinterburnFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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BlackBerry widget - which approach?

Hi experts,

I've been tasked with getting our current web app into a BlackBerry app for our customers. Having looked around the dev site I've installed the Visual Studio plugin (as our app is ASP.NET) but now I need some advice on the approach to take. The options I see available are:

1. Program the widget with Google Gears. However, I see that this is deprecated.

2. Use HTML5 instead. However, this is still in it's infancy and not all elements of it are supported even in 5.0

3. Use PhoneGap (I've used this for iPhone dev)

I don't want to go down one avenue only to find I hit brick walls and have to start again. So I would appreciate any advice :-)

Thanks

Jon
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-jonny-
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You could take a look at WebWorks, which is a utility just announced by RIM this week at DevCon that allows you to convert a web application (written in javascript/xml/html) into a fully-fledged java app with access to the APIs that a normal java app has access to.

If you're looking for compatibility with most other platforms, however, i would probably say HTML5 is your best bet.

What sort of app is it? do you need specialist APIs such as GPS, bluetooth etc?
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Hi there. Thanks for the reply - really useful to know about WebWorks, I'd not heard about that, thanks.

It's a taxi booking app, so it will require access to GPS and BlackBerry Wallet.

I have looked at jQuery Mobile which may well be the answer as it's going to be a one-size-fits-all solution to mobile device web apps. However, it's not even in beta till mid-October.
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Yes, you're right. Also thank you for bringing WebWorks to my attention.